When I double-click on the clock in the taskbar I get the following message:

Windows cannot find 'C:\WINDOWS\rundll32.exe'. You may have typed the name incorrectly in the Run dialog, or another open program cannot find a system file.

I can't access anything from the Control Panel as I get the same error message.

Can anyone tell me what's happened and how I can fix it?

Cheers!

p.s. This site is fantastic, you guys do a great job helping people like me!

Rundll32.exe is an important component of Windows. Quite often if you've had some kind of Spyware infection it may have been deleted to cause you problems.

Go to this page and download the Rundll file for your version of Windows (Me I presume).

Unzip it first into the folder C:\WINDOWS\Options\cabs (overwriting any existing copy), then copy it to the C:\WINDOWS folder.

That worked - thanks very much!!!!

Hi there

I am also having the same problem when in my control panel.

Owen - I tried exactly what you suggested and I am getting ' Windows cannot access the specified device .......

Any suggestions , I am a complete novice when it comes to understanding computers - but learning slowly

Thanks for anything you can suggest

Sam

I`ve got the same problem but the link aint working.

Here is a new link to the same site:

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/winfiles.php

Disregard, I have moved this post the adware/spyware forums.

ok, a couple of days ago my mom calls and says that her computer died. She had called Dell and they sent the restore CD's for WinXP SP2, by the time I get to the machine it's not dead, it's just not letting her log into windows.

The only thing it will do is boot up say that you have to activate windows and when you hit yes it just logs you off and says you have to activate windows. an evil loop. I found a technet article that said to just reinstall windows using the repair current installation option. That got rid of the activation loop.

Now I am stuck at this problem. "Cannot Locate RUNDLL32.exe" whenever I try to use the control panel. I have expanded the file from the WinXP SP2 CD over and over in both safe mode and normal mode I have downloaded the version listed in the link above and still every time I try to open a control panel item I get the error.

I have updated and run spybot and adaware, both of which removed hundreds of objects. The McAfee Security Center that she has installed is all whacked out and the manual virus scan button is missing. I did remove the hard drive and put in my old computer I'm using as a lab machine and scanned her drive with Symantec Antivirus and found nothing.

Any suggestions?

I'd prefer to just format the stupid thing and start fresh, but she has a lot of programs that I'm not sure we could find the installation CD's.

HELLO. I have the exact same problem on my win XP pro.

by clicking on clock or "add or remove hardware"(my computer) or right click on desktop->properties so i cannot even change screensaver !

i get this picture:


so i downloaded this file from link japhree gave... but i dont know where to extrackt it. i put it in windows folder in program files but its the same.

help!

I used to have a similar problem several weeks ago. I found solution from windows can't find rundll.exe Skip what;s they are going to sell you (he-he) and scroll donw that page. You'll manual solution method from three steps, it really helped me.

Maybe you even haver real rundll.exe file corrupted. Have you tried sfc.exe /scannow command from Start->Run dialog? It can search for corrupted files and recover them from your Windows CD. Good luck!

As this thread is basically over three years old I am closing it.